Not to laugh at the twentieth century is to shoot yourself.
But you can't laugh for long.
It's too much a matter for tears.
"Can you dance, Gottfried?" I asked.
"Of course.
I taught dancing once.
Have you forgotten how?"
"Forgotten—let the man forget," said Ferdinand Grau. "To forget is the secret of eternal youth.
One grows old only through memory.
There's much too little forgetting."
"No," said Lenz. "It's that the wrong things are forgotten."
"Can you teach me?" I asked.
"To dance?
In one evening, baby.
Is that all your trouble?"
"Haven't any trouble," said I. "Headache."
"The sickness of our time, Bob," said Ferdinand. "It would be better to be born without a head."
I went on to the Cafe International.
Alois was in the act of hauling down the shutters.
"Anyone there still?" I asked.
"Rosa."
"Come, let's all three have one more."
"All right."
Rosa was sitting by the bar knitting little woollen socks for her daughter.
She showed me the pattern. She had already completed a jacket.
"How's business?" I asked.
"Bad.
Nobody has any money."
"Would you like me to lend you some?
Here—been winning at poker."
"Winnings work wonders," said Rosa spitting on it and putting it away.
Alois brought three glasses. Later, when Fritzi came, one more.
"Knock-off time," said he then. "I'm dead-tired."
He turned out the light.
We went.
Rosa said good-bye at the door.
Fritzi hooked on to Alois' arm.
She walked beside him, fresh and light.
He shuffled along over the pavement with his fiat feet.
I stood and watched them.
I saw how Fritzi stooped down to the grimy, crooked waiter and kissed him.
He put her away indifferently.
And suddenly, I don't know how-it came, but as I turned and looked down the empty street and saw the houses with their dark windows and the cold night sky, such a mad longing for Pat came over me that I thought I should fall.
I understood nothing any more, myself, my behavior, the whole evening, nothing.
I leaned against the wall of a house and stared ahead.
I could not understand why I had done it. I had run into something there that had rent me asunder, made me unreasonable and unjust, tossed me hither and thither, and destroyed for me all I had laboriously built up.
I stood there helpless not knowing what to do.
I did not want to go home—there it would be still worse.
At last I remembered that Alfons' must still be open.
I went there meaning to stay until morning.